November 2008

November 30, 2008

A tip of the hat to the Mumbai news photographer Sebastian D’Souza for keeping up the highest traditions of photojournalism while pursuing the gunmen at the city’s Chhatrapati Shivaji train station. Sebastian’s quietly professional response to the unfolding drama produced some telling images of a particular gunman as he sauntered into the station with his weapon. That picture is now an iconic representation of the terrifying attacks. I do not have the permission to reproduce it. The image can be seen here:

Jerome Taylor of The Independent of London had the good sense to speak to Sebastian and write a story about the pictures. "They were shooting from waist height and fired at anything that moved. I briefly had time to take a couple of frames using a telephoto lens. I think they saw me taking photographs but they didn't seem to care,” Sebastian has been quoted as saying. Read more of Taylor’s report here:

November 29, 2008

Why is Amitabh Bachchan sleeping with his .32 revolver under his pillow in the midst of the bloody siege on Mumbai news? I am not even going to ask why the most protected cinema icon of India would feel compelled to turn to his revolver.

Bachchan wrote about his state of mind on his popular blog even as heavily armed terrorists defiled the city’s south with their blood lust. His refreshing candor in recording his emotions notwithstanding, a 66-year-old movie star sleeping with his revolver is not news by any stretch of imagination. That nugget has been widely picked up by the media, including in an op-ed piece on The New York Times by Suketu Mehta.

Of course, Bachchan made it a point to underscore that his revolver is licensed just in case some of his baiters decided to make an issue out of it. But still the question is why at a time when the city came under its most harrowing terror attacks a movie star’s musings draw so much attention. No one can deny Bachchan his right to feel anxious and enraged at what Mumbai went through and express it in any way he chooses to. Why does the media find this trivial bit of information worth reproducing?

The multiple terror attacks on Mumbai could push the incoming Barack Obama administration to sharpen its focus on the Kashmir issue.

The attacks are being viewed by some as President-elect Obama’s first major national security challenge that could draw him into the Kashmir dispute sooner than he might like. Although there is no direct link established between the Islamic terrorists operating in Kashmir with those who carried out the Mumbai attacks, a case may be made that eventually all jehadi groups are bound by a common Islamist philosophy. To that extent the Deccan Mujahedeen, a likely offshoot of the more organized Indian Mujahedeen, may well share the broader vision of those operating in Kashmir.

Part of the reason why the Mumbai attacks could more sharply define the new Kashmir approach is because in the final analysis Kashmir is seen as a fountainhead of the rising Islamist terror in India. Of course, factors such as the 2002 mass killings of Muslims in Gujarat do fuel some of the sense of extreme disenchantment within the Muslim community. However, the larger connection between the disparate groups will always remain a feeling of pan-Islamism.

Perhaps the clearest indication of a more pro-active Kashmir approach under Obama has come from Bruce Reidel, a former CIA officer and adviser to three US presidents on South Asia and the Middle East who has been appointed by the new president as his Pakistan adviser. In an interview with the influential think tank Council on Foreign Relations Reidel was quoted as saying as recently as September, “There's another place where I feel creative American diplomacy could be helpful. We ought to try to encourage a long-term settlement between India and Pakistan of the Kashmir dispute, based again on the principle that the existing line of control ought to become an international border with some special status reserved for Kashmiris.”
“We can't expect Pakistan to behave like a normal state, unless it has normal borders. And we can't expect Pakistan to behave the way we would like it to while it's obsessed and fixated on its neighbor and the problem in Kashmir. The problem in Kashmir has been in the doldrums for the past several years. It is now starting to boil really quickly, and when Kashmir boils, the result is Indian-Pakistani tensions that can produce war. We've seen that over and over again,” he said.

With Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pointing at external links of the Mumbai attackers, it is not lost on experts in the US that he could be talking of groups based in Pakistan. If that is indeed the case the brazen Mumbai attacks could yet work up new tensions with Pakistan. Since Obama is committed to making Afghanistan and Pakistan his administration’s foreign policy as well national security priority, it is only logical that he would have to pay particular attention to Kashmir.
While the chatter over Obama proposing to appoint a special envoy on Kashmir has died down in recent weeks, it is clear that the Mumbai attacks would bring back a whole lot of options on the table. At the very least they would force Obama and his South Asia advisers to reassess the situation on the ground. Those who know the issue of terror in India understand that the mushrooming jehadi outfits use the justification of the community having been wronged in India as much as it having been wronged globally. Such outfits no longer make any distinction between what they consider wrongs being done to Indian Muslims and those being done to Muslims worldwide. This fusion of global and domestic grievance among the jehadi groups, perceived or real, could make it hard for the Obama administration to tailor their Kashmir policy.

Nobody knows who Deccan Mujahedeen are or what their objectives are or whether they feel any affinity towards the Kashmiri separatists. But it may be safe to assume that all these groups morph into each other when it comes to what they have framed in their minds as Islam versus the world conflict. It is in this nebulousness that the Obama administration will have to pitch their Kashmir approach, in the light of threat perceptions emanating from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

November 28, 2008

Reminiscing of the Bombay of the good old fashioned gangsters of the 1980s with any nostalgia may sound gratuitously insulting today.

The worst that the mob bosses then did apart from smuggling gold, VCRs and some drugs was to occasionally engage in internecine gangland murders. Crime happened everyday but it largely stayed confined to the underworld. Rarely did it spill over onto the streets and fatally co-opt innocent citizens.

Not that there was anything even remotely uplifting about the gangsters then but seeing Mumbai from 10,000 miles away stagger in the face numbing terror strikes one cannot but think about dramatically things have changed. The cold viciousness of terrorists and their brutally efficient execution make the gangland killings of yore seem almost benign. “Apne dhande ka ek usool hai. Aam admi ko chhone ka nahi hai,” (There is one cardinal rule of my business. Do not harm the innocent),” was how Karim Lala, an alleged hatchet man, once described the Bombay underworld’s code of conduct.

As CNN covered the multiple Mumbai terror strikes for a straight 30 hours almost to the exclusion of any other news since Wednesday morning, it became clear that the city had been altered forever. Even though it has had many terror bombings since 1993, there is something insidiously enduring about this one, especially when one looks at a bunch of trendily dressed lunatics wielding AK-47 like some bizarre bling bling and firing randomly. Among the images that has stayed in my mind is of that young terrorist in light khaki cargo pants, blue T-shirt carrying a blue duffel bag and an AK-47 walking into the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (VT) station. Take the weapon away and the man could well be a wannabe movie star visiting the city to fulfill his celluloid dreams. That is the whole point of the new brand of terrorists. They do not even look the part in a city whose cinema has for long mastered the art of typecasting people.

It is tempting to believe that Mumbai may well reclaim its innocence of the 1980s despite such grievous attack on its soul. However, a realistic assessment in the aftermath of the massacre would suggest something more disheartening. Café Leopold may reopen and bring back its customers but they will all look over their shoulders at least once. The city’s well-heeled will return to their favorite watering holes at the Taj and Oberoi but not without first anxiously surveying the coming-ins and going-outs. VT will begin to bustle tomorrow but will miss a heart beat every time an out of the ordinary noise is heard.

Having lived in and reported on the city from all angles some friends asked me how it appeared from afar and how different it seemed after the attacks. Those are hard questions to answer. One is not even sure if they have any answers at all. Notwithstanding the impersonal nature of broadcast news one point came across loud and clear—the city had suffered a blow far more debilitating than before. One is bound to hear all the eulogistic references to Mumbai’s great “resilient spirit”. This time though one got the sense that city might have had enough of these attacks. It may well forsake its equanimity and choose to deal with the recurring problem of terrorism with much greater aggression.

There was something surreally normal about the way pigeons, startled by all the explosions, fire and smoke at the Taj Mahal Hotel on Wednesday night, returned at dawn to their familiar nesting corners. People could take much longer to return to their comfort zone.